Friends. I have been reading, listening and talking to people on different sides of the sex and gender debates for over a year before I felt confident enough to publicly to state an opinion.https://medium.com/@MForstater/international-development-lets-talk-about-sex-eb9de927c787 …
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We can use both definitions. Usually they align. When they don’t its polite and kind to treat people the way they want to be treated, even when they don’t ‘pass’ as the sex they’d like to be seen as.
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But here is the thing. Sometimes the interests of the female people (who may get pregnant, who tend to be physically less powerful, who face sex discrimination & violence from men) diverge from the interests of people who are male but would like to be treated as women socially.
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When these interests diverge (such as in questions over who has access to single sex spaces where women are vulnerable, who can compete in women’s sports), we have to be able to weigh the different interests up as a society and talk about it.
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Telling women that they must be kind when their interests are being traded off in favour of male people is something we should learn to notice and stop doing.
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Right now people who make that case for talking about this calmly and carefully are called names — bigot, TERF, nazi.
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And so maybe you haven’t engaged with their arguments. The debate is toxic. Cognitive dissonance is uncomfortable. There are only so many hours in a day. And if you are a bloke (or a ‘cis-man’ as they say) you probably feel like you best keep out of it.
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Or maybe you agree that its a problem that issue is not being talked about more seriously carefully. But you are fearful of being called names, or worse. I get that. I’ve lost my job at
@cgdev over this and i’m not going to berate anyone for not taking risks they can’t afford toShow this thread -
But please do one thing for me on this
#internationalwomensday - sit with the cognitive dissonance a bit longer. Try to turn on your 'system 2 thinking' modules and turn off the 'system 1'.Show this thread -
If you think there should be more space for clear, calm constructive debate over how women's rights (as a sex!) and the rights of transgender people can be protected do something to make that happen in whatever way you can.
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End of conversation
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There can’t be different definitions for the same thing though. That defeats the purpose of a definition.
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